Evidence grows N. America's first colonizers were European
LONDON — Stone Age Europeans were the first trans-Atlantic sailors. Columbus and the Vikings were mere ocean-crossing latecomers, according to a leading American anthropologist. Dennis Stanford, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, says Neolithic fishermen and hunters sailed the Atlantic in tiny boats made of animal skins 18,000 years ago and colonized the eastern United States.

Such a journey would represent one of the most astonishing migrations ever undertaken — the Earth was then in the grip of the Ice Age and much of its high northern and southern latitudes were desolate wastelands blasted by storms and blizzards.

On the other hand, much of the planet's water was locked in icecaps and glaciers, and sea levels would have been much lower than today's. The edges of the continents would have extended further into the oceans.

"The gap between Europe and America was greatly reduced," Stanford said. "It could have been quite feasible for fishermen and whale and seal hunters to sail around the southern rim of the packs of sea-ice that covered the North Atlantic and reach land around the Banks of Newfoundland."

Stanford's theory — outlined at a recent archaeology conference in Santa Fe, N.M. — is based on discoveries indicating ancient American people were culturally far more like the Neolithic tribes of France, Spain and Ireland than the Asian people whom scientists had previously thought to be the sole prehistoric settlers of North America.

Stanford also points out although modern Native Americans possess DNA similar to that of Asians, they also carry some variants found only in European people. This genetic input could only be explained by accepting Stone Age people could sail ocean-going boats, he said.

"We now know that human beings learned to sail 50,000 years before the present," he said. "Mankind settled in Australia then and it was not linked by any land bridge to Asia. It could only have been reached by boat. Clearly, we had mastered sailing tens of thousands of years before America was colonized, so we should not be surprised by the idea that people took boat trips across the Atlantic 18,000 years ago."

The theory that prehistoric Europeans colonized America was first put forward in the 1950s by archaeologist Frank Hibben, but was discredited by evidence supporting the notion the continent was populated 20,000 to 15,000 years ago by Asian migrants who walked across the land bridge then linking Siberia with Alaska, and who then trekked south through the continent.

Stanford does not disagree Asian folk colonized ancient America, but argues current genetic and archaeological evidence shows an influx of Europeans must also have taken place. The prime candidates for these migrants are the Solutrean people who lived in Spain 23,000 to 18,000 years ago and later colonized parts of France and Ireland.

They designed and made beautifully crafted fluted stone blades that bore a striking similarity to those made by the Clovis people who lived in America 11,000 years ago. Like the Clovis, the Solutreans made stone scrapers to prepare hides and kept stores of stone implements, buried in red ocher, round the countryside. These ancient Spaniards therefore must have been among the first New World settlers, Stanford says. Native Americans are Iberian, not Siberian, in origin.

The theory's main problem stems from the fact an Atlantic crossing in tiny Ice Age boats would have been an awesome undertaking. However, Stanford argues it would have been a less arduous undertaking than might be expected. "If a storm arrived, they would have camped on an ice island until the weather got better. Eventually they would have drifted west until they reach eastern America," he said.

Characteristics
Solutrean culture was dominant in present-day France and Spain from roughly 21,000 to 17,000 years ago. It was known for its distinctive toolmaking characterized by bifacial, pressure-flaked points. Traces of the Solutrean tool-making industry disappear rather abruptly from Europe around 15,000 years ago, when it was replaced by the somewhat cruder tools of the Magdalenian culture.

Clovis tools are typified by a distinctive rock spear point, known as the Clovis point. Like Solutrean points, Clovis points are bifacial and "fluted" on both sides. Fluting facilitates mounting or hafting the point to a spear shaft more securely. Clovis tool-making technology seems to appear in the archaeological record in North America roughly 13,500 years ago, and similar predecessors in Asia or Alaska have not yet been discovered.

[edit] Atlantic crossing
The hypothesis proposes that Ice Age Europeans could have crossed the North Atlantic along the edge of the pack ice that extended from the Atlantic coast of France to North America during the last glacial maximum. The model envisions these people making the crossing in small watercraft, using skills similar to those of the modern Inuit people, exploiting relatively plentiful maritime resources.

[edit] Transitional styles
Supporters of the hypothesis suggest that stone tools found at Cactus Hill (an early American site in Virginia) indicate a transitional style between the Clovis and Solutrean cultures. Artifacts from this site are estimated to date from 17,000 to 15,000 years ago, although a consensus has not been reached among researchers on their definitive age.

[edit] MtDNA Haplogroup X
The idea is also supported by mitochondrial DNA analysis insofar as the fact that some members of some native North American tribes share a common yet distant maternal ancestry with some present-day individuals in Europe identified by mtDNA Haplogroup X. Haplogroup X has not been found in eastern Asia or Siberia, unlike other Native American mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C and D.

[edit] Challenges to the Solutrean hypothesis
Difficulties with this hypothesis include the challenges of crossing the Atlantic with the technology of the time as well as a temporal gap of millennia between the apparent end of the Solutrean culture and the earliest discovered Clovis tools.

Other problems with the hypothesis include an apparent lack of Solutrean-style artwork (like that found at Lascaux in France) among the Clovis people. In response, proponents point out that the Solutreans introduced a tool-making innovation and not necessarily cultural or artistic practices.